


preamble

by sidonay



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 17:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13299546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidonay/pseuds/sidonay
Summary: “They’re late,” Charlie says to the weeds. Meyer glances at his watch, eyes the presumably empty warehouse to the left, the painted over windows, the scarred brick. He’s not wrong. “I told you—” Charlie doesn’t finish, gestures angrily with the hand holding his half-finished cigarette. A slow exhale escapes from between Meyer’s teeth.





	preamble

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure what to describe this fic as other than ‘a moment’. It’s a scene somewhere near the beginning of a much larger story, one that I may or may not write in the future because I liked writing for these two more than I thought. 
> 
> But, for now, here’s this. A fic with no real purpose and an abrupt end.

There’s a light, just by the edge of the docks, that blinks in the same time as a song he might have heard when he was younger. Meyer taps his index finger on the inside of the vehicle, feels a few pieces of the notes vibrating in the back of his throat but he swallows it, tastes something sour along with it as they go down. _Not a good song then_. He couldn’t figure as to why.

(So much has happened in such a short amount of time in his life that sorting out the minute fragments of it would take hours. It’s through no fault but his own. The only way to make sure that you don’t get kicked in the face while climbing the ladder is to always make sure that everybody else is behind you.)

_Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap. Tap._

Charlie is outside, pacing, smoking, and the orange glow from the tip of his cigarette follows the left, right sway of his head, subtle as he walks. His agitation is coming off of him in waves like heat from burning pavement or, maybe, that was just the smoke. Either way, he could _feel it_. He’d been like this since after the deal was made but even more so after Meyer had shown to pick him up tonight.

( _What’s got your dander up_ , Meyer had asked before they left.

 _Don’t feel right_ , Charlie had said, already putting on his coat. That was it. He ground his teeth, but he put on his jacket. He’ll do it anyway because Meyer is there. He’s put his nickels and dimes into it. Must be worth it even though it doesn’t feel right. He’d never been good at pretending that things were fine, though. Even if he never said anything about it, you could see it around his eyes, the flare of his nostrils, the way his skin tightened along his jaw.

Some would say that Meyer paid too much attention to Charlie to be able to notice that. Meyer just thinks that if you know someone long enough, you either know all or you know nothing. Nothing, for him, wasn’t an option. Not anymore.)

The engine had been shut off shortly after they had stopped so rolling down the window wasn’t going to work. Meyer opens the door instead, just enough that Charlie would be able to hear him. It smells like the kind of stagnant water left in alleyways that didn’t get any sun, the liquid that collects around the rusted feet of dumpsters and waterlogged cardboard boxes. This isn’t somewhere that life flourishes. This isn’t somewhere you’d want to cast your line.

No matter how you looked at it, what you believed, deals and decay were a bad match. But they’d agreed to meet here, because that’s what the other side wanted. _Nobody’ll disturb us_ , the man had said. _Nobody’ll even know we’re there_. Meyer couldn’t understand why they needed this, why that mattered. This whole part of it was just a formality, an exchange that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. They could have done it in the middle of a four-way intersection and not been hit by a single car by the time they were done.

The more he thinks about it, the more he’s finding it difficult not to blame Charlie for the twitch in his shoulders. Still. One of them had to keep a cool head.

“You need to relax,” Meyer calls out through the space in the door. He can see Charlie’s mouth moving but the sound doesn’t reach over to him. He’s responding to what was said, but it’s not meant for Meyer to hear.

“I _am_ relaxed,” Charlie replies loudly when he’s finished grousing to nobody in particular, back still turned towards Meyer. He’s talking to the ground like it was the one who told him that, like it felt his feet moving and couldn’t take it anymore. _You need to relax because I can feel the soles of your shoes and pretty soon you’ll wear a hole to the center of the Earth._

“Relaxed men don’t pace,” Meyer says. Charlie lifts an arm, palm raised to the sky. A shrug.

“They’re late,” Charlie says to the weeds. Meyer glances at his watch, eyes the presumably empty warehouse to the left, the painted over windows, the scarred brick. He’s not wrong. “I told you—” Charlie doesn’t finish, gestures angrily with the hand holding his half-finished cigarette. A slow exhale escapes from between Meyer’s teeth. He opens the car door the rest of the way, slides himself out of the vehicle but doesn’t walk past the front of it.

“You told me,” Meyer says. “I know.”

“This is a set-up.”

“They’re late,” Meyer repeats, uses a slightly different tone than the one Charlie had. ( _They’re just not here yet_ , his voice says. _That’s all there is._ ) If it was _that_ , if it _was_ a set-up, he would know. He’s good at figuring that out, can usually tell by handshake alone. _Yeah_ , he’ll think while he grasps their wrist, _this is going to end in gunfire_. “It’s a power move. They pick the place. They show up on their schedule, make us wait.” Charlie holds out his hands again, finally spins to look at Meyer. There’s a piece of hair out of place, curled just by his right eyebrow. He should fix that. Meyer’s fingers twinge.

“Power move,” Charlie snorts, drops his arms and ash falls. “I know about that shit. I’m not— We’ve met three times, they’ve never been late. Now they are.” He swivels the cigarette between his index and middle finger, points the hot part of it down towards his thumb like he’s going to put it out just like that but he flicks it, watches it settle. He mutters something, wanders over to it and crushes the stub out with his heel.

“I suppose,” Meyer concedes, “You’ve got a point.” There’s a particular way that Charlie is holding himself that Meyer has only just recognized and he could kick himself for not latching on to it before they’d walked out of Charlie’s room half an hour ago to make their way here. He leaves his position by the car, walks right up to Charlie, leaves very little space between them. Charlie does not back away. “You’re packing.”

“Might be,” Charlie says, which might as well have been a confirmation.

“They said—”

“I know what they said,” Charlie responds. They’re both talking low like there are other people standing just a few feet away and they needed to keep this private. It was habit, more than anything else. “But I told you.”

“You told me.” There’s an ache going across Meyer’s shoulders.

“Besides, I took it as more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule. We’d be stupid not to walk into this unarmed.” A pause. “I’d be stupid to let you.” The ache is joined by a heat on the back of his neck but it’s blown away by the cool air coming off the water. “And _they’d_ be stupid to think we’d actually agree to that.” Charlie reaches into a pocket, pulls out his pack and takes out a second smoke, offers the box towards Meyer. He almost says no but changes his mind. Charlie lights Meyer’s first before his own. “I say we give them two more minutes and then we bail.”

It was tempting but it wasn’t good business.

“Neither is being twenty minutes late,” Charlie says. Meyer blinks. They telegraphed easily to each other, speaking without using their words but Charlie wasn’t a mind reader. Charlie smiles. He points at Meyer with the fingers holding his cigarette. “You were muttering to yourself.” The grin turns into a grimace. “Fine.” Says it like Meyer was still arguing with him. Says it like Meyer is talking and talking and he wants him to stop. _You win_. “Until we finish our cigarettes.”

“Until I finish mine,” Meyer clarifies. Charlie had always been a fast smoker; he’d be even faster now that he was in a hurry to leave. There’s silence between them for a little while, but that’s not unusual. Meyer feels fingers brush against his elbow, the hem of his coat but he can’t tell if it’s on purpose or not and he’s not willing to ask.

“We never should have made a deal with these guys,” Charlie says eventually.

“Charlie.” Just that. Nothing else.

“I’m just saying. They treat everybody they work with like this or just us?”

“They’ll get here. We’ll get this done and we’ll never have to see them again.” Smoke breathes out of the side of his mouth and it comes right back in his face, stings his eyes. Charlie’s shaking his head but he doesn’t speak. “They’ll be here.” Was he reassuring Charlie again that time or himself? Difficult to tell. There are sirens in the distance, flashing lights, and they both lift their heads towards it simultaneously, but it wasn’t meant for them. Some other trouble, some other emergency in another jagged puzzle piece of the city.

( _I think you forget sometimes,_ Charlie had said to Meyer as they shared a bottle of whiskey for no particular reason one summer night, the windows open, voices and cars and _life_ drifting in through the torn screen. Someone down the street was playing jazz on a crackling speaker. An odd but fitting choice for the weather. _I think you forget other people live here besides us_. He hadn’t meant ‘here’ as in the apartment building. He meant ‘here’ as in the buildings growing like oaks around them and the wildlife that lived in the bark.

Meyer didn’t. He never did but he could see why Charlie might think that.)

Meyer’s almost down to the filter, considering that maybe Charlie was right, that this was going sideways and they were foolish to stick around for as long as they have when the bright whites of a car are suddenly spotlighting over them, tires crunching, kicking up gravel, bouncing over potholes that would never get filled in. Meyer drops the cigarette, puts it out the same way Charlie had before, grabs the cuff of Charlie’s coat before he could take a step away.

“Take care of yourself,” Meyer tells him and then reaches up, puts that piece of hair he noted earlier back in its place.

“We ain’t meeting the queen,” Charlie says when Meyer does it but he doesn’t stop him, either. He scowls at the vehicle, narrows his eyes.

“Five minutes,” Meyer says, straightening out his sleeves.

“Whatever,” Charlie replies, the pad of his thumb just barely brushing along the outline of the gun in the holster tight at his side, tries his best to disguise it as him tidying himself for company. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Three men exit the car and one of them apologizes for being late. He doesn’t sound sincere. The light is still flickering and Meyer hears a song in the back of his head but he still doesn’t know where it’s from, what it means to him, and he’s pretty sure he never will. For now, they’ve got business to attend to.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr [@kenlubin](http://kenlubin.tumblr.com/).


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